The Marcos Dynasty Revived
Philippines elects the scion of the world's most corrupt and violent couple
This is the latest in my series of chronicles of elections around the world in this epiphanal year of 2022. Already we have had Hungary, Slovenia and France in Europe. Lebanon will be coming on Sunday (May 15). Kenya will be electing its president and parliament in September, as will Brazil in October, and of course there's the United States off-year elections in November which will set America on its own course domestically and around the world. Continue to watch this space for the latest as nations choose their leaders. And there'll be a host of other compelling tales from hither and yon.
As stunning as it may appear to those, like myself, who still recall, first-hand a half century later, the brutal and venal reign of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, now their only son and heir Ferdinand 'Bongbong' Marcos Jr. appears to have been resoundingly elected president of the Philippines—at least 15 million votes separating him from his nearest rival.
It won't be official for some days, but right now it looks like a tsunami in an election that may also go down as among the most crooked and violent in the Philippines' long and dark history of such contests. Malfunctioning voting machines, insufficient backups, voters mysteriously left off registration rolls, widespread ballot tampering, exchanges of gunfire and five rounds of grenades leaving four dead—all features of this balloting so very much in the Marcos family tradition.
With 90% of returns counted by 1:45 a.m. Tuesday, Bongbong had already accumulated some 28.8 million votes—more than twice the number of his runner-up, the unfailingly honest outgoing vice president Leni Robredo. When finally certified in several days, it will be the biggest victory margin for a Philippine president in nearly half a century. Also swept into power as vice president under Bongbong, Sarah Duterte, daughter of the brutal outgoing president Rodrigo Duterte, whose massive killing spree against everyone from community organizers to political opponents under the guise of anti-drug crusading, horrified much of the world. All that kept him from another term was the limit set by the Philippine constitution, one of the few remaining outcomes of the now barely-remembered, bloody People Power Revolution that toppled Bongbong's parents from power 36 years ago.
Fully half the Philippine population are too young to have any memory of the years when the Marcos's first pillaged their nation. The memories of those corrupt and bloody times are now painted in different hues on Tik-Tok and other social media controlled by Bongbong and his supporters. But I remember. I visited the Philippines often during those days as Southeast Asia bureau chief of The New York Times and chronicled no end of abuses that marked the Marcos's corrupt rule. Imelda, in particular, was enraged by my writing. Now, she is still alive at the age of 92, hoping that the arrival as president of her son and heir will power-wash the lingering dirty linen of her own reign, and lift the threat of jail that a conviction on charges of corruption and thievery still hangs over her. Now, just as Filipinos were preparing to head to the polls, I revisited those times in my latest CNN column. I can only hope that Imelda will see this, though it seems to have had little impact on the vast majority of Philippine voters.
The full column can be found here …. These are just some of the excerpts…..
Many Filipinos might not recall the frightening rule of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos -- but I do
The Philippines is voting for a new president and the favorite to replace Rodrigo Duterte is Ferdinand Marcos Jr. -- better known as "Bongbong." He is the only son of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, the notorious dictators who looted the nation of billions of dollars, left a trail of torture and abuse of political opponents, and became internationally renowned for their extravagance and greed before being ousted in a bloody coup in 1986.
Even if most Filipinos alive today don't remember what those days were like -- half of the country's population was under 8 years old when the Marcos parents were ousted -- I certainly do.....
Stories of the Marcos family extravagance and corruption are legendary, and as a former reporter in the region I have my fair share. In October 1976, the IMF/World Bank held its annual meeting in Manila. To prepare, the Marcos's engineered an all but unprecedented building boom -- 14 new international-class hotels in barely as many months......
Meanwhile the Philippines had been awarded a World Bank grant to rebuild parts of Manila's nearby Tondo slum, one of the worst in Asia. These funds had disappeared -- and Robert McNamara, former US Defense Secretary and then-head of the World Bank was coming to town.
Imelda, governor of metro Manila, simply ordered the slum demolished and paved over, with 60 families carted to some vacant land 20 miles outside the capital, where they'd been dumped in a large field. I discovered the malevolent scheme. McNamara was furious, Imelda never forgave me.....
How is another Marcos even possible in this democracy that Filipinos have struggled to maintain, even back 40 years ago when I first began reporting on its politics as Southeast Asia bureau chief for the New York Times.....This time, at least, Bongbong and his crew seem to be taking some pages straight out of Donald Trump's MAGA playbook. "It's the rise of social media," Dindo Manhit, CEO of the Stratbase ADR Institute, a leading political think tank in the Philippines, told me during our telephone conversation from Manila.....
And young Marcos has been doing his level best to rehabilitate the memory of his parents, describing his father as a "genius" in a CNN Philippines interview......
.....Would the Biden administration tolerate the same level of Marcos-like abuses or excesses as a succession of American presidents did during the two decades his parents were in power and that stretched through the Vietnam War era?
........Today, the US has hitched its Asian strategic priorities to Australia, with billions of dollars in defense agreements. But a sympathetic Philippines government could be a most valuable asset in the region -- provided the costs are not too high for either America or the Philippine people.
From a strategic perspective, perhaps the only redeeming value of Ferdinand Marcos was that he was "our guy." Is Bongbong?